How Trust Builds Interdependence with Deepa Iyer, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at Building Movement Project

Moneda Moves is back for Latino Heritage Month. This season asks one question: who gets trusted in the U.S. economy right now, and how is that trust built? All month, we'll be talking with experts in business, politics, ecosystem building and social justice to dig into it.

Deepa Iyer is a writer, lawyer and advocate who helps individuals, organizations and networks bring about lasting and effective social change. She's worked in the nonprofit sector for more than two decades.

She moved from Kerala, India, to Kentucky when she was 12. After 9/11, she spent 15 years in policy advocacy and coalition building with Asian American, South Asian, Muslim and Arab communities. That work took her through the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, the Asian American Justice Center, South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) and Race Forward.

Today she's the Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Building Movement Project, where she leads projects on solidarity and social movements. She created the Social Change Ecosystem Map, a framework of 10 roles people play in movement work.

She's written three books. Her first, We Too Sing America, won a 2016 American Book Award. Social Change Now is her guide to the ecosystem map. She also wrote We Are The Builders.

Most of our conversation centered on trust. Deepa explained how you build it when the institutions meant to protect you have treated you as a threat. She made the case for interdependence over individualism, and why leaning into it takes trust with community. She broke down how the ask changes depending on the role you play. And she walked me through what repair looks like after trust breaks.